USATSI_18102140 — © Jim Rassol-USA TODAY Sports

The Best Glove on the Philadelphia Phillies Belongs to Ranger Suárez

Philadelphia Phillies starter Ranger Suárez has been overlooked for the past several years, but perhaps the value of his defense has gone most neglected of all.

Author:
Ben Silver
Aug 16, 2022 3:07 PM EDT

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Philadelphia Phillies

The Philadelphia Phillies used to be a Gold Glove factory. From Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins, to Carlos Ruiz and Aaron Rowand, to Shane Victorino, Pedro Feliz, Jayson Werth and Placido Polanco, they all played outstanding defense.

But since 2012... silence. The Phillies won nine Gold Gloves from 2007 to 2012. Since then J.T. Realmuto has been the Phillies only recipient of the award. It's an area of team construction the Phillies have almost entirely neglected.

Placing Rhys Hoskins in left field, Carlos Santana at third base, Scott Kingery at center field and Jean Segura at shortstop were never going to do the club any favors, but one would think that across a decade of baseball, one premium defender would rise above the pack.

For the 2022 Phillies, it already has.

Ranger Suárez is the best defensive pitcher in Major League Baseball. Since 2019, Suárez's first full season in the Big Leagues, albeit as a reliever, he is fourth among all pitchers in defensive runs saved with 15. Two short of the Major League leader, Max Fried, Suarez has played fewer than half the innings of Fried and Zack Grienke, two of the three players outpacing him. Even third place Dallas Keuchel has well over 100 more innings than Suárez.

Stated simply, Suárez is the more efficient at fielding his position.

However, DRS is a confusing statistic when viewing players under a small sample size, and all pitchers are going to have small sample sizes as fielders. So let's look at the statistic DRS is based upon to better understand how well Suárez outclasses his competition.

Range factor per nine, or RF/9, is an extremely basic statistic. It determines exactly how many plays a fielder makes on average per nine innings.

Since 2019, the average pitcher has an RF/9 of 1.47. In that timespan, Greinke made on average 2.34 players per nine innings. Keuchel's RF/9 was 2.13. Fried's RF/9 was 2.26.

Suárez's though, was a comparatively astronomical 2.72. He makes over an extra out per nine innings compared to the league average pitcher, 1.25 extra outs per nine innings to be exact.

Over the course of his whole career, removing those extra outs would cause his lifetime ERA to rise from 2.98 to 3.12. That may seem insignificant, but that's a huge margin over the course of a career.

Suarez's defense isn't properly valued, nor is the defense provided by most pitchers, but his dynamic fielding ability has won ballgames for the Phillies this year, and will do so for years to come.